U.S. first lady Laura Bush, right, is given a tour of the pyramids of Giza by egyptologist Dr. Zahi Hawass on Monday, May 23, 2005 in GIza, Egypt. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Mrs. Bush endorses Mubarak election plan
Posted on Mon, May. 23, 2005
NEDRA PICKLER Associated Press
GIZA, Egypt - First lady Laura Bush on Monday endorsed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's plan for presidential elections as "bold and wise" despite complaints from opposition groups that the voting is designed to keep Mubarak in power.
"I would say that President Mubarak has taken a very bold step. He's taking the first step to open up the elections and I think that's very, very important," Mrs. Bush said. She spent a day in Egypt, much of the time with Egyptian first lady Suzanne Mubarak.
Speaking to reporters in front of the Giza pyramids, Mrs. Bush noted that the United States' democracy also took time to fully develop.
"As you know, you have to be slow as you do each of these steps," Mrs. Bush said. "You know that each step is a small step, that you can't be quick."
Egyptians are deciding in a referendum whether to accept changes to the constitution that would allow for the country's first multi-candidate presidential election in September. Mubarak, Egypt's president for 24 years, has been regularly re-installed in yes-no referendums in which his name is the only one on the ballot. He hasn't formally announced he will run again but is widely expected to do so.
Opponents say the new system is being set up to ensure Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party still controls the election outcome.
Last week, the White House said President Bush supports Mubarak's plan to hold free and competitive elections for president and urged Egypt to allow for full campaigning as well as international observers.
Winding up her five-day trip to the Middle East, Mrs. Bush echoed her husband's praise of the Egyptian leader.
"I think he's been very bold and wise to take the first step," she said.
Earlier Monday, Mrs. Bush said she was not surprised to encounter protesters over the weekend during her tour of Mideast holy sites and pledged the United States will do all it can to help resolve age-old conflicts.
"As we all know, this is a place of very high tensions and high emotions," the first lady said while standing in the garden courtyard of the Church of the Resurrection in Abu Ghosh, Israel, a predominantly Muslim town where some believe Jesus appeared on Easter. "And you can understand why when you see the people with a deep and sincere faith in their religion all living side by side."
Mrs. Bush visited sites sacred to all three major religions born in the region. As she toured the 12th century church, nuns and monks sang Psalm 150 in Hebrew as a symbol of the religious cultures coexisting in the region.
President Bush talked with his wife by telephone Monday and she told him the trip was going well, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. McClellan dismissed the protests as "a little commotion" and said the demonstrators were few although they got a lot of coverage.
From Israel, Mrs. Bush traveled to Cairo, where she met with Mrs. Mubarak at Ittihadiyya Palace. The two women then taped a segment for "Alam Simsim," the Egyptian version of "Sesame Street," with a peach-colored puppet named Khokha. "Mama Suzanne" and "Auntie Laura," as Khokha called the first ladies, talked about the importance of reading to children.
US First Lady Laura Bush chats with Egyptian Sesame Street character Khokha before a segment taping at Alam Simsim Studio in Giza, just south of Cairo.(AFP/Jim Watson)
U.S. first lady Laura Bush (L) and Egypt's first lady Suzanne Mubarak tour the set of 'Alam Simsim', the Egyptian version of the popular U.S. children's show 'Sesame Street' in Cairo, Egypt May 23, 2005. U.S. first lady Bush is on a Middle East tour to counter anti-U.S. sentiment in the region. REUTERS/Hasan Jamali/Pool
Mrs. Bush's low-key travels Monday were in contrast to her stops Sunday at sites sacred to Muslims and Jews.
Asked about the protests during an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America," Mrs. Bush said she understands resentments that have been built up, in part because of reports and pictures of prisoner abuse.
"I know from visiting Afghanistan ... that many, many people are glad our troops are there, that we are giving them a chance to rebuild their country," she said. "All of us, everyone ... deplore the photographs that we've seen, the reports that we've heard of prisoner abuse, but that's not really not what happens (with U.S. forces) ... This is a handful of people."
She said she feels that the American presence in the Middle East and Southwest Asia "is really wanted and is needed" to ensure nation-building and peacemaking.
Asked on NBC's "Today" show if she had felt endangered during the tours in the Middle East, the first lady replied, "No, I did not at all. I think maybe the reports that you all have seen have been slightly exaggerated. ... I have never felt at all unsafe."
Mrs. Bush's five-day visit was intended partly to help defuse anti-American sentiment in the region. Strains have arisen because of the U.S.-led war in Iraq and allegations that American interrogators have mistreated Muslim prisoners.
ON THE NET
Laura Bush: http://www.whitehouse.gov/firstlady
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wants his first White House visit this week to yield assurances from George W. Bush of pressure on Israel to start heeding a 'road map' peace plan, aides and diplomats say. But Abbas has scaled back expectations of concrete promises from Bush of 'final-status' negotiations on a Palestinian state once Israel evacuates the occupied Gaza Strip in three months. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas talks to the media after his arrival at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah May 21,2005. (Loay Abu Haykel/Reuters)
Abbas heads to U.S., wants Bush to pressure Israel
By Wafa Amr
RAMALLAH (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wants his first White House visit this week to yield assurances from George W. Bush of pressure on Israel to start heeding a "road map" peace plan, aides and diplomats say.
But Abbas has scaled back expectations of concrete promises from Bush of "final-status" negotiations on a Palestinian state once Israel evacuates the occupied Gaza Strip in three months.
Thursday's meeting has great symbolic importance as the first by a Palestinian president since 2000, when Middle East peace negotiations collapsed into violence for which U.S. officials often blamed Abbas's late predecessor Yasser Arafat.
Washington, keen to embark on the long-stalled "road map," has welcomed Abbas's vow to seek statehood by peaceful means as well as a ceasefire he declared with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in February and persuaded militants to respect.
But diplomatic momentum has diminished.
A spate of truce violations by Gaza militants, who say they are avenging Israeli assaults, have exposed Abbas's shaky grip. Meanwhile, Israel has suspended ice-breaking gestures like military pullbacks in the occupied West Bank.
Abbas wants to ensure there is movement toward talks on a state after Israel scraps Jewish settlements in Gaza -- slated for August -- and for that he needs Bush's support.
But Abbas's aides said he did not now anticipate a Bush pledge of talks on "final-status" peace issues like borders. Israel rejects such talks until Abbas subdues militant factions, a precondition for carrying out the "road map."
"Abbas doesn't have high expectations that Bush would commit to push Israel to enter final-status negotiations after it pulls out of Gaza," a senior Palestinian official said.
"But he does want assurances from Bush that he will make Israel implement the road map after the Gaza pullout (to set the stage for) a sovereign, territorially contiguous state."
He meant mainly a halt to Israel's expansion of large West Bank settlements. This contravenes the road map, but Sharon cites a Bush pledge to him in 2004 that Israel would not have to cede all the West Bank under any realistic peace deal.
POSSIBLE MILITANT THREAT
Abbas is expected to impress on Bush the threat he believes he will face from militants, especially the growing Islamist Hamas movement, if Palestinian hopes for a viable state through negotiations are dashed after a Gaza pullout.
Palestinians welcome the prospect of taking over Gaza. But Sharon has made clear Israel will keep larger tracts of the West Bank as the trade-off, absorbing what Palestinians say would constitute the center of a future state.
Many analysts say that if Sharon slams the door to talks after uprooting all 21 settlements from Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank, militants will resume major attacks.
Israel says no road map process is possible without an end to Palestinian militant activity. Palestinians say Abbas will have difficulty stopping it unless Israel also meets obligations under the plan, such as freezing West Bank settlement activity.
Washington has praised new Palestinian security reforms and wants Israel to help Abbas weaken the appeal of militants by doing more to ease restrictions on civilian movement in the West Bank. Both matters are initial "road map" requirements.
"But the Americans are not ready to confront Israel on other sensitive broader issues that could pose a problem for Sharon or disrupt the disengagement plan," one Western diplomat said.
Nationalist Jews are escalating a protest campaign against the pullout, denouncing it as "a reward for terrorism," and opinion poll support for the plan has slipped a little in reaction to fresh barrages on Gaza settlements by militants.
ISRAEL TO PRESS BUSH
Sharon's top security adviser Dov Weisglass will precede Abbas to Washington on Tuesday to urge the White House not to promise the Palestinian leader any concrete steps toward statehood, a senior Israeli political source said.
"Weisglass will explain to the Americans that there are growing fears in Israel of 'Hamas-stan' in Gaza after we leave, and that giving Abbas a prize before he has stamped out terrorism would damage Sharon's case for proceeding with disengagement," the source told Reuters.
Abbas will bring Bush up to date on reforms, praised by U.S. officials, in which he has retired force commanders who ignored his orders to rein in militants, merged feuding security agencies and tried to recruit militants as policemen.
"President Abbas will try to get the message across that changing the culture of terrorism works better than (forcibly) dismantling the infrastructure of militant groups. Luring those groups into the mainstream will moderate them," Rafiq Husseini, chief of staff of Abbas's office, told Reuters.